Monday, September 29, 2014

Sunday, September 21, 2014

"Like free improvisation, jungle was music made under the pressure of the moment, in response to its immediate environment. Inevitably, as is the case with free improvisation, the music was never best served by recordings. The real sound of jungle, where it finally sounds like the music samplers were invented for, comes through on tapes of live radio broadcasts: all butchered beats and bass abuse with MCs giving increasingly incomprehensible shout-outs to massives all over London, plotting the subterranean night moves of the city via secret listening cells. Jungle saw the flats of the Nightingale Estate, the tower blocks of the borough, the huge speaker cabinets, with junglists scaling the buildings to plant secret antennae on rooftops and windowsills, guerrilla technology that turned these ugly buildings into huge would-be woofers, a modernist noise that was, literally, the sound of the city"
-- David Keenan, writing about Dean Blunt, whose Hype Williams music was informed by "the foggy tapes and foggier memories of Rush FM and Defection FM", and who himself declares that the jungle pirates were "punk for my generation"

Emitted a sound midway between a gasp and a guffaw when I read this in a recent issue of The Wire. The casualness with which the received knowledge is unfurled.... coming from the dude who in the actual Nineties talked derisively about "dance plodders" and opined that Keiji Haino could wipe the floor with Rob Haigh.....

I suppose, c.f. DJ Screw and Oneohtrix Point Never, that when a Hypnagogic Hero says something's cool, it suddenly becomes relevant, retroactively sanctioned...

And then that odd little contention that jungle "was never best served by recordings", only came alive on pirate radio shows.... As if the "butchered beats and bass abuse" weren't engraved in the vinyl to start with (for sure, it got chopped up some more on the decks, got augmented electrifyingly by the MCing). As if the whole culture wasn't based on recorded music. But then I guess if you never actually heard those recordings played through a massive system, at a massive you're inside...

Friday, September 12, 2014

Thursday, September 11, 2014

"In March 2012 Suhrkamp published Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen's oral-history Der Klang der Familie about Berlin's emergent techno scene to high critical acclaim... The English translation of ‘Der Klang Der Familie’ will be published on 9th November 2014, which is the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. One of the main catalysts that kickstarted the culture that Berlin is praised and known for today".

"Post-reunification Berlin was a big playground seemingly filled with infinite possibilities. In the former no-man’s-land that covered the city, places suddenly sprung up out of nowhere, often lasting only for a few weeks, where history was going to be written. Techno, the new youth culture that would unite East and West Germany spread out from here at 180 beats per minute.

"After the fall of the wall, Berlin was full of disused spaces and abandoned buildings, just waiting to be filled with new life. It was unclear who owns any of this, which allows the techno scene to take over these new empty spaces in both halves of the city. Clubs, galleries, ateliers and studios spring up – only to disappear again a few weeks later. Soon Berlin has become the epicentre of a new culture, attracting enthusiastic followers from all over the world to clubs like the Tresor and the E-Werk. Wearing gasmasks and welding goggles they dance the night away to the jackhammer sound of previously obscure Detroit DJs. Among them are writers, artists, photographers, musicians and designers. Techno quickly develops into a mass movement, finding its most exhilarating expression in the Loveparade.

" DJs, club-owners, music producers, bouncers and scenesters, people from the centre of the movement and from its peripheries – in Der Klang der Familie they all get to have their say and paint a vibrant picture of a time when it felt like everything was possible."

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Check out this simulacrum of a mid-90s pirate tape made by J Rolla for Drumtrip (came out last year, but Droid just pointed me towards it) which consists of choice tracks from the time + MC snippets from some of his own fave pirate tapes....

Here's what J Rolla says by way of explanation:

this set is based around tunes from the 93-94 era (with one from 92 thrown in that was way ahead of its time) that were big pirate radio favourites of mine, tunes that instantly make me think of a particular station, DJ/MC, tape, time or place the second I hear that breakdown....

I have spliced in little sections of some of my old recordings (mainly Kool FM ones) that I happen to have ripped and saved on my computer – I tried not to go overboard with this, but did include some slightly longer memorable clips, like the infamous “Duffer Paul” reload, Kool FM NYE 94 into 95, which friends and me creased up over many times.

A lot of these tunes are not heard so much these days compared to the bigger anthems (many of which owe their success to stations like Kool and Rush), some are a bit rough around the edges and some were overshadowed by a monster of an anthem on the flipside (Renegade’s Something I Feel for example).

Drumtrip, of course, is the blog whose slogan is "Where it's 1994 every day" !

For some reason I hardly ever go back to pirate tapes after 1993 -- despite having huge numbers of 1994 ones (the year we moved back to the UK) and a lot from 95 to 97 made on trips back to London or sent by kind friends. They don't have quite the same memor-E rush effect, perhaps 'cos the music got less nutt-E, the MCing less disorderly,the whole culture more professional. Also from end of '93 onwards I got more and more CD comps and mixtapes that I made myself of stuff I'd got on vinyl - so the tapes made off pirate then weren't played so often as the 92-93 ones, because I wasn't so dependent on them, just had them for that week's usage and to nab the prereleases and dubplates around....

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Max Pearl at The New Inquiryon "the health rave" and "Yoga Raves" -- which harness rave's expenditure-without-return and invest it as part of a regime of personal productivity:

"The health rave shifts the orientation of the party away from the wasteful pursuit of pleasure, the nihilistic accumulation of stimuli leading up to the inevitable crush of black, towards the constructive goal of making oneself a better person"

"In a cultural moment characterized by life-hacking and self-optimization, the logic of work has seeped into every facet of human life.... So what happens when the torrential force of the party is redirected towards the cause of health and self-improvement? When we don’t know how to waste time anymore, it may mean that work has already won."

Good fun - rather more fun than this one below I did last summer for a UK publication as a tie-in with the Xpanded rerelease of E-Flash, although I was set the taller task of covering almost the entirety of electronic dance history rather than just rave-as-rave, and in a tighter word count. Still I did have some fun with the letter Z, and also with Q. Which is one of the only overlaps with FACT's A to Z, in fact.

A to Z of Rave

A is for...

ACID. This trippy form of Chicago house music took the UK by storm
in 1988, its wriggly Roland 303 basslines turning dancers into robot-zombies
and inspiring the mass chant “acieeed!”.

A is also for keyboard whiz turned pop-rave pin-up ADAMSKI,
and for APHEX TWIN, king of weirdy-beardy electronica.

B is for...

BERLIN. Synonymousin the 90s with minimal techno (harsh,
stripped-down, punishing) and in the 2000s with minimal (exquisite, detail-oriented),
Berlin is now the mecca for clubbing
tourists from all over Europe. Taking advantage of the cheap fares offered by airlines
like Easyjet they take mini-vacations that skip historical landmarks in favor
of clubs like Berghain.

B is also for Big Beat, the hip hop meets house party-sound
pioneered by The Chemical Brothers.

C is for....

CASTLEMORTON, the biggest illegal rave in British
history. which in May 1992 drew 40 thousand crusty travelers
and urban ravers to party for a whole week in pastoral Worcestershire.
Instigated by renegade sound systems like Spiral Tribe, Castlemorton ultimately
led to the Criminal Justice Bill’s anti-rave legislation.

C is also for CHICAGO, birthplace of house music.

D is for...

DAFT PUNK, the robot-mask wearing French duo who pioneered disco-house
with 1997’s Homework, Eighties-revival electro with 2001’s Discovery, and in
2013 staged a triumphant comeback with the Seventies flashback epic Random
Access Memories.

D is also for DUBSTEP, the last decade’s most innovative UK
sound, and for DETROIT, the spawning ground of techno.

E is for...

ECSTASY, the catalyst for rave culture’s take-off and still
a staple party potion in clubland. Sold as pills or powder, MDMA makes people “loved up” and gives them
energy to dance all night. It fits the sleek futuristic textures and repetitive
rhythms of electronic dance like a glove. But it can also kill, through bad reactions or
heatstroke, while over-indulgence can
lead to paranoia and depression.

E is also for EDM, America’s rebrand name for techno, and
for ELECTRO, the 2000s trend for Eighties-influenced retro-synth sounds.

F is for....

FATBOY SLIM. Onetime indiepop musician turned DJ/producer, Norman
Cook became king of Big Beat with unsubtle but hugely effective sample-based
anthems like “The Rockefeller Skank” and “Praise You”. His peak of popularity was
the 2002 free party he threw on Brighton’s seafront, which drew 250,000 and got
very messy indeed.

F is also for FUNKY, the Afro-influenced house that ruled
London’s pirate radio in the late 2000s, and for FWD>>, dubstep’s
foundational club.

G is for...

GATECRASHER, the Sheffield superclub at the fore of the late
Nineties trance explosion. Its dedicated following called themselves “nutbags,”
worshipped DJs like Paul Van Dyk, and developed a distinctive look blending
New Romantic, cyberpunk and Ibiza-style fancy dress: green and blue
hair, toy robots, flashing T-shirts.

G is also for GOLDIE, metal-toothed public face of drum
& bass, and for GABBA, the Dutch-born genre of ultrafast, tough-as-nails
techno still globally popular under new names like jumpstyle and hardbass.

H is for..

HOUSE REVIVAL. 30
years after its birth in Chicago, house is more popular than ever with British
youth, resurging recently with Duke Dumont’s #1 smash “Need U”, the minimal house that soundtracks the London
dance craze “shuffling”, and the North-of-England
house mutant known as Jackin’ Bass.

H is also for HACIENDA, the club at the epicenter of “Madchester”,
and stomping ground for HAPPY MONDAYS, rave ‘n ‘ roll rapscallions.

I is for...

IBIZA, the Balearic isle where DJs Paul Oakenfold and Danny
Rampling experienced the synergy of house and Ecstasy, then imported the
laidback, let-it-loose vibe of clubs like Amnesia back to London. Like its Mediterranean rival sunspot Ayia Napa,
Ibiza has remained a destination for raving tourists ever since.

I is also for IDM or Intelligent Dance Music, electronic
braindance that’s rarely danceable and
usually not as smart as it thinks it is.

J is for...

JUNGLE, the most innovative and exciting sound of the 90s, a
frenetic mash-up of hip hop breakbeats, reggae bass-boom, and hardcore techo’s
sinister synth-riffs. Rising from the pirate radio underground, the one-time black sheep of the rave family
became trendy, smoothing out into coffee table drum and bass by the likes of
LTJ Bukem.

J is also for JACKING, the Chicago style of frenzied-yet-robotic
dancing, as celebrated in UK’s first house #1 single, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley’s
“Jack Your Body”

K is for

KETAMINE, the potent dissociative drug, properly used as a
vetinerary anesthetic but adopted by some clubbers because a small bump up the
snout makes music sound really weird. Loathed by other clubbers for creating
anti-dance vibes tinged with squalor: “ket zombies” slumped in a glass-eyed stupor, or stumbling into
you and dribbling on your shirt.

K is also for The KLF,
“stadium house” surrealists who ruled early 90s pop, and KOOL FM, London’s
leading jungle pirate station.

L is for...

LONDON, whose multiracial melting pot has spawned innovative rave sounds for the past 25 years,
from jungle through speed garage and 2step, to grime and dubstep. But it’s the non-central parts of the capital
that have been central in this story:
Zone 2 and Zone 3 hinterlands whose tower blocks make for pirate radio
transmission sites. Above all those Eastern post-codes inaccessible by the
Tube. London underground sounds are
strongest where the London Underground doesn’t go.

L is also for LFO, pioneers of bleep, the bass-heavy,
electro-influenced house sound that emerged from North East cities like Leeds,
Sheffield, and Bradford to pummel early Nineties dancefloors.

M is for...

MADCHESTER, nickname for a city and an era, when clubs like
Hacienda and Thunderdome, producers like A Guy Called Gerald and 808 State, and
flares-wearing crossover bands like Stone Roses and Happy Mondays made NW
England the driving center of UK dance culture. As gangs fought to control the E trade,
Madchester became Gunchester and the “baggy” dream turned nightmare.

M is also for MEGADOG, haven for crusty-ravers, and DERRICK
MAY, Detroit techno innovator best known for eternal rave classic “Strings of
Life”.

N is for...

NEW YORK and NEW JERSEY, birthplace of garage, the soulful
deep house style named after Larry Levan’s club The Paradise Garage, and
synonymous with DJ legends like Masters At Work, Danny Tenaglia, and Todd
Edwards.

N is also for NITRO DELUXE, the New York outfit whose
electro-tinged “This Brutal House”” rocked UK dancefloors in 1987.

O is for...

ORBITAL, aka Sevenoaks-based Phil and Paul Hartnoll, creators
of tingle-triggering rave anthem “Chime”
and the breathy, ethereal-girl bliss of
“Halcyon”, and perennial festival faves as a crowd-pleasing live techno act.

O is also for ORBITAL RAVES, 1989’s increasingly massive
outdoor parties thrown in fields and aircraft hangars at locations near the
M25, and for THE ORB, whose dub + cosmic
rock + whimsy albums made them the spliffhead’s chill-out choice.

P is for....

THE PRODIGY, Braintree’s finest, led by demon producer Liam
Howlett, and rave faves for their kick-ass live PAs. Loved and lambasted in
equal measure for the toytown techno fad they inspired with 1991’s“Charly”, the
Prodge reinvented themselves as rocktronica stars and conquered America with
the killer riffs of “Firestarter”.

P is also for PLASTIKMAN, aka, Richie Hawtin, co-founder of
Detroit’s PLUS 8 label, and one of the world’s most inventively slamming DJs.

Q is for...

QUEUE, a fixture of the rave experience, whether due to
poorly organized ticketing and guest lists or
to intensive body-searches for illegal substances by bouncers (in some
cases confiscated, then resold to punters inside the venues).

Q is also for QUADRANT PARK,
legendary Liverpool club famous for its balls-out hedonism and shady
vibes.

R is for...

RAVE and RAVERS, terms whose tangled history includes
Sixties psychedelic happenings (Pink Floyd’s All Night Rave) and Fifties trad
jazz fans gone riotously crazy on beer and Acker Bilk at 1961’s Beaulieu
Festival. In 1988 warehouse parties kept
getting bigger until promoters started finding outdoor locations. Illegal or semi-legal (with the landowner’s
permission, but unlicensed and anarchic), these provoked a massive police clampdown.
From 1991 raves went legal, commercial and increasingly well-organised, and
today are closer to rock festivals. But a free party scene of outlaw raves still
exists.

R is also for ROLAND, maker of house and techno’s iconic
drum machines the 909 and 808, plus the acid-house bass box, the 303. And for RAGE, London’s seminal hardcore club, where Djs Grooverider and
Fabio reigned as lords of darkness.

S is for...

SKRILLEX, whose bass-blasting but euphoric take on dubstep
and spectacular state-of-the-art audio-visual projections have made him the
biggest draw on the US EDM festival circuit.

S is also for SPEED GARAGE, the sexy, bumpin’ blend of
American house and London jungle that bubbled up from the pirate radio
underground in 1997, and for SPIRAL TRIBE, mystic-anarchist free party sound
system and key catalysts of Castlemorton.

T is for ...

TRANCE. Invented by
Germans in 1993 as a coldly cosmic branch of the techno family tree, it
gradually absorbed a dose of Ibiza’s idyllic summer vibes and remerged at the
other end of the Nineties as the cheesy-and-choonful people’s choice when it came to E-friendly
floor fodder. Comes in many flavours, from psychedelic to hard to progressive
to fluffy, purveyed by DJs as diverse as Tiesto, Sasha & Digweed, and Judge
Jules.

T is also for 2-STEP,
the 1998-2000 mongrel of garage, jungle, and R&B, hatched by the pirates
but rising rapidly to become the turn-of-millennium sound of UK pop (even
Victoria Beckham got in on the action, fronting Truesteppers’s smash “Out of
Your Mind) and recently returned to the charts with retro-steppers
Disclosure.

U is for...

UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE. Vanguard of Detroit techno’s second
wave, the guerrilla trio of Mad Mike,
Jeff Mills and Robert Hood unleashed some of the fiercest tracks of the early
Nineties, militant monsters like “Riot” and “Death Star”. Then they split, with
Mike going mellow and jazzy, Hood helping to invent minimal techno, and Mills
becoming a DJ superstar famed for his three-turntable mixing.

U is also for UNIQUE 3, Bradford bleep pioneers.

V is for...

ARMAND VAN HELDEN, renegade DJ-producer from New York but an
honorary Brit, having topped the UK charts twice. First with 2000’s
uncharacteristically sensitive and disco-y “U Don’t Know Me” and then again with
2007’s “Bonkers”, in partnership with grime star Dizzee Rascal.

V is also for “VOODOO RAY” by A Guy Called Gerald, a hit in
1988 and still, arguably, the U.K.’s greatest homegrown house track ever.

W is for...

WARP, which started out as a Sheffield record shop, noticed
the burgeoning boom of white-label DIY techno by bedroom producers, and became
the leading label for bleep, with acts like LFO and Nightmares on Wax even
scoring hits. Warp reinvented itself as the home of “electronic listening
music”, its roster of mindbending
experimentalists including Aphex Twin and Autechre.

W is also for ANDY WEATHERALL, ace DJ, renowned remixer/producer of indie-dance
crossover band Primal Scream on tunes like “Loaded”, and Warp artist himself as
Sabres of Paradise.

X is for...

X, what American say instead of E as shorthand for Ecstasy.
Other American MDMA-related slang terms include “rolling” (as in, “I’m rolling hard”, i.e. under the influence) and
Molly (via molecule, the nickname for
MDMA in powdered form rather than pressed pills)

Y is for...

YELLOW MUSIC ORCHESTRA, Japanese electronic outfit
whose 1979 single “Technopolis” and 1981
LP Technodelic are contenders for the
seeding the concept of “techno” in the minds of Detroit techno’s founding
triumvirate Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Another is Alvin Toffler’s concept “techno rebels” ,
featured in his 1980 book The Third Wave. Kraftwerk, generally considered
godfathers of techno, released “Techno Pop” on their 1986 LP Electric Café, but
Juan Atkins’s first group Cybotron had already released the track “Techno City”
in 1984.

Y is also for YOLO,
or “you only live once”, the reckless get-wrecked rallying cry of EDM
America.

Z is for...

ZOMBY, genius UK producer famous for his hallucinatory take
on dubstep with tracks like “Aquafresh” and for his retro-rave album Where Were
You in 92.

Z is also for ZZZZZZZ’s,
which you’ll need lots of to make-up for all that all-night-dancing.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

and as a palate cleanser, the spoof rave audio-flyer / ad mentioned in the FACT A to Z

So tempting to turn Rave Week into Rave Year.... year upon year.... for ever and ever, Amen Break.

Because so much music was made then, there's still so much to discover.... even for a professional rave historian

Here's a few more Ozone tunes I never heard

Like "Trak 1" several of these could have and probably should have gone into the FACT thing on Bleep I did a while ago, as recently reposted.

* Jerome Hill himself combines many, if not all, of this rave-archaelogy / rave reproduction antique roles. Here's him talking about upcoming output from his labels "My third label is Fat Hop, which pretty much focusses on rough uptempo hip hop and b-boy breaks, and that has four records that I’m drip feeding out there over the next couple of months – namely, a 12” retrospective by rave pioneers The Blapps Posse; a 7” of hardcore influenced b-boy hip hop styles with a twist by myself under the name Itsu Uno and my Kool FM compadre DJ Warlock as Han Do Jin; plus two more 12”s coming soon from Dookie Squad, an early 90′s UK crew that are still consantly on fire – search YouTube for ’6 Feet Under’ if you want a taste.

Then also on Fat Hop there’s also a mini album from an under-the-radar 1992 crew that never had an official release but thankfully still had their old demo tape. It’s kind of a cross between Demon Boys, London Posse and Cypress Hill: mind blowingly rough, six tracks, three of which I only just found out were engineered by a young Roots Manuva! I’m particularly excited by this release as to me it’s like an artefact, time stamped from that era, that’s been frozen for 22 years and now can be unleashed as a testament to what could have been and now will be… an immensely wicked record".

Then there's his activity as a deejay:

I present a weekly show on London’s Kool FM every wednesday 11am-1pm where I dig pretty deep into acid house, bleep, hardcore, techno, electro and loads of other stuff, mainly concentrating on the 1986-1991 era. I’m also now into the third year of running my bi-monthly techno night Don’t at an intimate venue in Kingsland road where we can bring in a nice sound system, lasers and smoke and book people from the label and similarly, umm, “un-like minded” DJs and live sets.... I’m just now getting set to play at Bestival this weekend, and had my first mix CD released a couple of weeks ago, which was myself and Mark Archer from Nexus 21 / Altern8 picking and remixing classics and brand new stuff.. It’s called ’1 Night in 88′.

"Around about 1993 or 4 I sadly went down a musical dead-end and started buying some quite dodgy mid nineties housey stuff, which at the time I thought was great, but was actually clearly a product of ecstasy mind clouding.... Thankfully I was swiftly rescued once again by techno, care of the Final Frontier parties every friday at Club UK, and from there, some time in 1994 I fell into the London illicit warehouse party scene and in particular Jiba sound system who I played with every weekend in the mid to late 90′s in some amazing reclaimed venues.... Then I got a job managing a record shop in Camden – Dragon Disc – and although we were predominantly a techno specialist, I had access to so much different music and ended up being the confused but happy muddle of all the different genres I love and play today."

Which is no crime of course, but interesting that he's so invested in that end of Eighties to early Nineties period now.... perhaps it's just better music? Stood the test of time better? Vibesier? Unlike other equally-E-fueled-and-framed music of the 90s, it can stand on its merits, even long after the drug-haze has dissipated.

Interesting sentiment, here, on young people being able to connect with these sounds from 20 to 25 years earlier, despite low-level production:

"I don’t think it’s that much of a foreign sound for them, plus there’s the internet where anyone if they’re interested can trace stuff back to it’s origins and recognise the threads running through it all. It’s funny that word “retro”. I never use it really, as the music from that era, turned over and morphed so quickly into its current incarnations – late eighties house and electro morphing into 1990 breaks, bleeps and bass, moving in to hardcore, and then in about 1994 into drum’n'bass and jungle, which are still both going strong today.

"Like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, it’s easy to forget that hardcore, or “old skool” as its often called now only lasted three years, if that, before completely evolving into something else, and that original form is not made any more. I can understand “retro” being applied to old rock n roll music, but hardcore? It’s not retro: it’s just hardcore. It’s like Latin is an extinct language that influenced our language – it’s an extinct music that still has relevance today. UK heritage! "

And on what is still left to revive and revisit:

"I think new beat definitely should have a revival. The Sound Of Belgium film threatened to cause a revival and i thought it was going to, but it never happened..I also put out a 12” with two of my favourites on Don’t a few years ago. I love that sound. It’s wonderfully dated but yet still manages to sound completely mystical. Acid house and hardcore have been enjoying an extended revival now for some time, and that’s all still good. As for what should be bagged up and dumped over a bridge never to return, I guess prog house, and horrible piano rave froth like Rozalla"